Protest at Egyptian Embassy, Dublin

international | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice Monday May 05, 2014 14:52 by Justin Morahan

Tuesday 6 May 2012

Tuesday's protest is against the death penalty and for the release of Ibrahim Halawa

I will be protesting outside the Egyptian Embassy tomorrow on two issues: The protest will start at 11 a.m. and end at 12 noon.

1. The Death Penalty which has now been imposed under the military government on 1212 people in two batches of 683 and 529 sentences. The 683 still stand with 37 of the 529 upheld.

2. The Detention of Ibrahim Halawa, an Irish citizen, and the alleged brutal treatment meted out to him and other political prisoners in Egypt.
My protest is on humanitarian and human rights grounds, non-political, non-sectarian and non-violent. I invite others to attend

THE DEATH PENALTY: To order the death penally to be carried out on any human being is, in my opinion, wrong, barbaric and inhumane. To order the brutal killing in cold blood of 1212 human beings is heinous. It shows a degree of arrogance, a belief in omnipotence and a corruption of power difficult to comprehend.

If the Egyptian courts, under an Egyptian military ruler, imagine that commuting 492 death sentences makes a whit of difference to international outrage when there are 730 of these horrendous sentences still in place, they are mistaken. The outrage is compounded by the fact that the trials were a mockery of what trials should be. As Amnesty International has said: "The court has displayed a complete contempt for the most basic principles of a fair trial and has utterly destroyed its credibility".
The Egyptian government should commute all the death sentences, abolish the death penalty and ask for forgiveness.

IBRAHIM HALAWA(18) is an Irish citizen, born and reared in Ireland, who has been in prison in Egypt for nine months. I do not know him. According to reliable media reports, on the day of a mass protest in Cairo, he and his three sisters took refuge in a mosque but were arrested and imprisoned without charge. His sisters were released after three months. According to reports, Ibrahim is forced to drink water from a toilet, endure threats of violence from guards and spend 23 hours daily in a cell with 64 other prisoners. According to reports also, former prisoners have alleged being tortured in Egypt's prisons. Ibrahim is rightly afraid especially after hearing of the death sentences.
I do not know Ibrahim but as a human being I am his brother. I call on the Egyptian courts and the Egyptian military government to release him forthwith.
I also call on them to release all political prisoners in Egypt.

Justin Morahan
Pacifist, Human rights activist